Battling Benedetto has tons of help

Staten Island Advance file photo by Rich KaneJohn Benedetto played on Tottenville's 2001 and 2003 PSAL city champion baseball teams. His teammates are planning a benefit game to offset his medical expenses.By JACK MINOGUE

It began as just another holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore's Point Pleasant Beach.

One moment on July 3, John Benedetto was body-surfing.

"I did it all the time," he said last week.

The former Tottenville HS baseball standout doesn't remember much after that. The next moment ...

"A wave threw me down. I hit my head and heard it break," he added
while sitting in his wheelchair on a patio outside his room at the
Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J.

"It" was the C6 vertebra. Benedetto lost consciousness. As he lay on
the sand, waves swept over him and almost made the spinal injury
inconsequential.

He was drowning.

Three friends —Josh Chaffee, Juan Sanchez and Rocco Francica — found
him and pulled him out of the water. Jodie Rounds, a nurse, and
firefighter Brian Cirillo used CPR to revive him, and he was rushed to
the hospital.

When Benedetto regained consciousness, he had no feeling and no motor skills: He couldn't move any parts of his body.

No one who knew the two-time Advance All Star, a three-year starter on
the Tottenville HS baseball teams which won city PSAL championships in
2001 and 2003, expected him to accept that.

"John had a great work ethic," said Tottenville coach Tom Tierney Jr.,
who will coach one of the teams when Benedetto's high school baseball
friends play a benefit game to raise money to help John's family with
astronomical medical bills.

BENEFIT GAME

The game will be played Oct. 10 at the College of Staten Island
where Mike Mauro, an assistant coach at Tottenville while Benedetto was
there, is the Dolphin coach and for a night, will coach the Pirates
again, in the dugout opposite Tierney.

"He was focused and mature," Tierney added, pointing to Benedetto's
posting a 4.0 GPA while earning a degree from Johns Hopkins University.
"He never eased up."

Which accounts for a couple of outstanding catches the centerfielder
made during the Pirates' 2003 championship run — and for Benedetto's
being able to attend the game next month.

"I'm pretty excited to get the heck out of here for a day. It should be
a fun night," he said, then added: "The most difficult thing is I've
gone from being independent to being so dependent upon people."

The baseball game is just one indication there's been no shortage of people — for him or his family.

Not from the family's neighbors. "The Marisa Circle Gang," John calls the seven families in the Charleston block.

Without being asked, they began to reconstruct the house to make it handicapped accessible, John Benedetto Sr. said.

Larry Ciarcia orchestrated the work as the "gang" took out the
furniture so they could take down walls and clear the way for
construction crews.

"At the end of the day after the construction people leave, they come
in and clean the house while we're at the hospital," the senior
Benedetto said. "And, John has not eaten hospital food for two months.
They either bring food cooked at home or from a restaurant."

Another, Vito Pignatelli, began to sell wristbands.

MAKING PROGRESS

"He couldn't keep up with the orders," the father said. John and his family have had plenty of company at Kessler.

"Not only close friends," John said. "But people from the past. People
I lost track of have reached out and come over. There hasn't been one
day I haven't had a visitor from outside the family."

The day this writer was there some three dozen gathered and the Stefan
family, friends of John's brother, Nicholas, sent enough food to feed
them — and just about everybody else on the second floor. John
struggled a little with his cell phone that day, but his arms and hands
are getting stronger.

"I can brush my teeth and my hair," he said. "I've made a lot of
progress toward being independent, and the people here told me that
usually the most progress comes between three and six months. I'm not
even at three months yet."

That's hardly surprising to Mauro: "John's the most indestructible player I ever coached."

Buoyed by the support of family and friends, John Benedetto's determined to demonstrate just that.